Effect of SrF2:Pr3+-Yb3+ Nanophosphor on Downconversion of High Energy Photons for Efficient Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

Abstract

An emerging important class of photovoltaics for the next generation, the dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) has attracted great attention due to its low-cost, simple fabrication process and good performance. Though, one of the major loss mechanisms leads to lowering the power energy conversion efficiency is thermalization of charge carriers generated by the absorption of high energy photons. One promising novel strategy to decrease such thermalization loss is the use of downconversion (DC) luminescent materials as spectral converters. The rare-earth doped downshifting materials can converts higher energy photons into lower energy photons based on energy transfer from lanthanide ions to Yb3+ ions. In addition, the downconversion nanoparticles (DCNPs) are also act as scattering centers which can facilitates the light capture in photo-absorbing layer. With this aim, the rare earth doped downconversion SrF2: Pr3+-Yb3+ nanoparticles were synthesized by facile template free hydrothermal method. X-ray diffraction analysis confirms the formation cubic SrF2 phase. The prepared SrF2: Pr3+-Yb3+ down-shifting nanophosphor shows strong absorption in UV region and broad luminescence band emission in visible region evidenced from absorption and photoluminescence studies respectively. The enhancement in power conversion efficiency (PCE) was achieved by employing the synthesized downconverting nanomaterial as bottom layer in DSSC photoanode (Fig.1). The photovoltaic performance of the device was studied using standard solar simulator at 1 Sun intensity (AM 1.5 G) and DSSC with SrF2: Pr3+-Yb3+ shows improved efficiency of 9.066% than bare TiO2 based device (8.395%). The down-shifting nanophosphor material enhanced the efficiency of DSSC by 7.4% with 7.5% increment in photocurrent density compared to bare TiO2 based device. Figure 1